


Witchcraft

by canadino



Category: Gintama
Genre: M/M, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6032305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadino/pseuds/canadino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A 21st Century Witch battles an unruly upstairs neighbor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witchcraft

His upstairs neighbor was a menace, as was the case with all upstairs neighbors. While Takasugi could understand (and begrudgingly tolerate) certain noises like footsteps and the occasional thump of something dropped, the unusual scraping sounds and frequent steady thuds were just inconsiderate. As he was a witch, Takasugi could wave his fingers and silence the source by rendering them immobile and subsequently pissing off the neighbor, but his magic was limited by his inability to control something he had no mental visualization of. He made do for a couple of days by sending vibrations through the ceiling of his bedroom. It did nothing to stop the grating sounds as he was trying to practice the hexes he dreamed of inflicting on his enemies. The upstairs neighbor was, obviously, public enemy number one.  

Takasugi was someone who talked big but would never dream of directly confronting said neighbor. He summoned his fox spirit to do the dirty work for him. She slithered out from the summoning seal he had placed on the floor, as if he were dragging her from a nice, restful sleep. “What whim of yours will I be entertaining now?” she asked. Tsukuyo was by no means the best or most polite familiar, but she got the job done when he asked and she was good at it. She tossed her head, keeping her snout in the air in disinterest. She settled down on the rug where she was summoned, rather than approach Takasugi to greet him after months of being left alone. He met her glittery violet eyes with the same steely disdain. 

“My upstairs neighbor is always making a racket. Go up and investigate what it is they’re doing and report back. Make your report as detailed as possible; I want to be able to hex them through the walls without having even set foot in their room.”  


Tsukuyo yawned. “Is that all? You would be better off going up and chatting with them on your own; you need to get out more.” He ignored her obvious jabs. She got up and soared through the window. She could move through walls, so Takasugi did not know why she did not just float up through the ceiling. Tsukuyo stretched under the Japan sun and began to fly away from the building.

“Hey! I told you to go upstairs!”  


“I will,” she called back, waving a paw dismissively. “Let me explore a bit before, you slavedriver.”  


Takasugi went about his daily business for a few days after, going to his job assisting at the local university’s old books library. It was no secret among the witch community that old, magical texts usually ended up in university shelves, hidden here and there with their magical properties wasted for years. Dormant, these texts stopped giving off their magical signatures, so a witch would have to go through the collection slowly to find and reactivate them. Had he been given free reign, he might have stripped the libraries of all their valuables and quit, but his shifts forced him to fetch the same few textbooks for the students who never bought their own. 

On the fourth day, Takasugi remembered that he had sent Tsukuyo out on a fairly simple job and she had not returned. He called for her using his fox whistle, but when she did not come, he summoned her again. 

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” she hissed. She was in her human form, a woman with the same gold hair that her coat was. Her hair was put up and she was wearing an apron. Upon seeing him, she seemed to realize why he had called for her in the first place. “Oh, I forgot about you. By the way, I quit. I’m renouncing my familiar status with you.”  


“You can’t do that,” Takasugi said. “You were passed down by my father. You can’t just break the contract.”  


“Maybe not literally, but figuratively and spiritually I quit,” Tsukuyo said, frowning. “See you later.”  


“Wait!” Takasugi yelled, struggling to make heads or tails of this. Tsukuyo was starting to climb back through the seal back to wherever she was heading. “I...this makes no sense. Why are you doing this? I didn’t even say anything this time.”  


Tsukuyo looked at him, and then - he gaped - she blushed. She averted her eyes and lowered her head in perfect imitation of a lovestruck human school girl. “I’m,” she said, “in love.” She disappeared before he could grab her and cancel out the seal to interrogate her. 

He did not want to do it, but she left him no choice. Takasugi knocked, as aggressively as he could muster, on the door of 304. He heard a few muffled voices from behind the door and more clattering. He knocked again, a little harder this time. When the door finally opened, a man with silver hair and a toddler in his arms greeted him. “Yes? I didn’t order any takeout today.”

Takasugi bristled. “I’m not a delivery boy. I live downstairs, and...”

“Magic!” the little girl in the man’s arms shouted, throwing her hand out. Takasugi stopped and stepped back, as if he were actually expecting a child to manifest any spells. Children’s magical pathways were usually closed, only opening with age, and magic tended to transfer into energetic or disruptive behavior. Even if she happened to be a witch, she could do him no real harm at this point. The man holding her stared at him.   


“I live downstairs,” Takasugi started again, feeling vaguely stupid for having entertained the girl. She was now staring at him too. “You’ve been making a big fuss, but more importantly, do you know of this woman...”  


“Who’s at the door, Gin honey?” Tsukuyo chirped, appearing next to the man. Takasugi turned to look at her. “I’m not going back with you,” she said. If she was surprised to see him, she didn’t show it.  


“You can’t do this,” Takasugi repeated, trying to relay how unbelievable and ridiculous the whole situation was. “You’re under contract. You can’t break these things that easily.” The man and the girl were now looking at Tsukuyo too. “If I have to wipe this guy’s mind, I’ll do it...”  


“Don’t you dare!” Tsukuyo threw up a very visible forcefield in the doorway, creating a barrier between Takasugi and the rest of the 304 apartment. Whatever magic had collected in Takasugi’s hand fizzled out; Tsukuyo had thrown down all her cards and showed her magic to nonmagical folk.  


But the man did not seem bothered. “Settle down,” he said, patting Tsukuyo’s back. She flushed - Takasugi still could not believe what he was seeing, his hardened silver-tongued fox familiar _blushing_  - and the forcefield disappeared. “Why don’t you come in? We don’t want to make a fuss.” 

The inside of 304 looked exactly like Takasugi’s apartment below, but it was much more cluttered. Sitting in the living room was a boy a little older than the girl in the man’s arms, looking up at the commotion without moving. When Takasugi followed Tsukuyo into the place, the boy trotted over to the man and grabbed his shirt. “See, you’re scaring the kids. Don’t be so hotheaded all the time.” He put the girl down on the couch. 

“I’m sorry,” Tsukuyo said. Her voice was coming out strange; Takasugi knew she was trying to wrestle with sounding sweet and motherly as she had no doubt done before she had been discovered, but now that Takasugi was around, she was trying to save face by also being gruff.   


“Are you running some kind of daycare out of your apartment?” Takasugi demanded. “I’m pretty sure that’s not allowed on the lease.”   


“I’m just babysitting them,” the man said, finally really paying Takasugi some mind. He looked Takasugi up and down. “You Tsukuyo’s boyfriend or something?”  


“No!” Takasugi said.  


“My taste in men is so much better,” Tsukuyo said at the same time. “I mean...you’re much more charming and handsome than this little runt.”  


“She is a fox,” Takasugi said. “And I don’t even mean it as a metaphor. She’s an actual fox. I sent her here on purpose to watch you. She’s not even human.” He would wipe the man’s memory anyway, so if he could manage to get him to renounce Tsukuyo, perhaps her heart would be broken enough for her to come back with him. A witch was nothing without their familiar; there were just some things a familiar could do that a witch couldn’t as a human.

“I know.” Right in front of Takasugi, the man grasped Tsukuyo’s hand and pulled her toward him. The little girl on the couch covered her eyes and slapped her hand on the boy’s face to cover his as well. He yelled as she knocked his glasses clean off his face. Tsukuyo was mere breaths away from kissing the man from 304 - and she reverted back into her fox form.

“She gets like that every time we get even a little too close,” the man said as Tsukuyo floated away, almost physically steaming from the stimulation. The little girl and boy wandered over to where she had collapsed in a giddy heap in the corner. “So I knew she was a spirit. You said you lived downstairs?”  


“Yes.” Takasugi glowered at the man. He had much more power over Tsukuyo than he did, and he wasn’t even a witch himself. The man did not flinch at Takasugi’s nasty look.

“I’m Sakata Gintoki. Thanks for sending her up to help me out. I agreed to look after them. It was supposed to be a one time thing but Shinpachi’s sister works three jobs and I can’t ask a single woman who’s raising her brother to pay me. I think she’s taken advantage of that. And Kagura’s father is never around so if I won’t look after her, no one will.”  


Takasugi had truthfully stopped listening after the second sentence. “I didn’t send her to help you,” he said. “I sent her to spy on you so I could figure out why you always make so much noise so I could stop you.” He had also just played all his cards. Gintoki blinked. 

“Who actually are you?”  


“Takasugi. Don’t think that just because you’re looking after some brats that I’ll forgive you for letting them run loose and wild. Can’t you keep them quiet for once? And tell Tsukuyo you don’t need her help anymore; she’s my familiar and I can’t have her unresponsive.”   


“Magic,” the little girl, Kagura, said, coming up to them. She had Tsukuyo curled up in her arms. She would never let Takasugi hold her like that; she would rather claw his face off. She knew he saw this and realized this too, because her tail was swinging smugly as she gazed up at him. “Are you a witch, mean guy?”  


“I’m not mean,” Takasugi said.   


“He’s very mean,” Tsukuyo purred. “He’s a terrible witch too.”  


“Witches aren’t real,” Shinpachi said, coming up next to Kagura. “They’re just people in storybooks.”  


Takasugi flicked a finger and sent them both in the air. Though Shinpachi cried out and grabbed frantically at Gintoki, Kagura stayed bobbing calmly, still holding onto Tsukuyo. Takasugi lowered them down slowly at Gintoki’s insistence as Shinpachi started crying. This prideful display was an unforeseen mistake, because Kagura would not let him alone until he showed her more magic. When she became bored and unimpressed by his minor spells that showered her in sparkles or his manipulation of the water in her cup, she demanded then that he teach her as well. When Kagura finally let out a mouth-splitting yawn, Gintoki announced it was time for their nap, and although she resisted, he tucked her and Shinpachi into his futon. Tsukuyo helped Gintoki pull the comforter up to their shoulders as Takasugi watched them at the doorway.

“You’re good with them, in a childish way,” Gintoki said when they were finally alone and he had made them tea. Tsukuyo was curled up in a ball on his lap, dozing. Her human form took considerable energy. Takasugi was amazed she had kept it for so long while also looking after two children. “I still can’t really believe that you’re a witch. I always thought they were like...girls in pointed hats and mini skirts and pink wands.”  


“You’re a pervert,” Takasugi said. Gintoki showed him a toothy grin.   


“Maybe I am. I don’t think you’d look good in a mini skirt, but I’m willing to be proven wrong.”  


The thought made Takasugi frown and he quickly remembered the actual reason why he was here. “I know Tsukuyo’s been helping you out, but you need to return her to me. You need to tell her you don’t need her help anymore. She’s very willful so nothing I can say will make her change her mind.”

“You’re not that strong of a witch if you can’t control your familiar like that.” He brought a hand gently down her back; her ear twitched and she settled deeper into his lap. “But really...even if you don’t actually have the power to chain her down, you’re not that bad for wanting to negotiate with me instead of taking her forcefully back.”

“Complements won’t do anything. I could hex you into a pile of ashes if I wanted to.”  


“Oh, I’m so scared.” Gintoki was a stupidly foolish person who was still grinning at him from across the table with no sense of self preservation. Takasugi had already showed with Kagura the breadth of skills he had, so he really could kill a man if he wanted to. “She’s very helpful. But I could probably bring out more of her than you could. She’s attached to me and I think she trusts me completely even though she doesn’t know me for that long. I could probably get her to turn against you, if I asked. Doesn’t that make you jealous?”  


“Why would I be jealous of her for being in your good graces?” Takasugi asked. Gintoki’s grin grew a little more and he regretted saying anything.  


“I meant being jealous for her liking me more than you, but that’s okay too.”   


Tsukuyo was too old to throw a tantrum but she sulked anyway on Takasugi’s shoulder. “It’s alright,” Gintoki said, smiling at her from the doorway. “You can always come visit. My door is always open to you. Come in your human form too; I’d like to get to know you a little more there too.”

“You’re awful,” Tsukuyo said, but she knead Takasugi’s shoulder bashfully.   


“You can come too, I guess,” Gintoki said to Takasugi. “But wake up on the right side of the bed next time.” Takasugi did not resist his urge to charm Gintoki’s collar to squeeze against his neck.   


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
